ANTHOLOGY

You've heard of , and . But when you come to take delivery of the stonking new Alien Anthology, the name you want to address your thanks to is one that's probably less fam iliar: Charles de Lau zirika. One of the world's most renowned DVD and Siu- ray special features specialists, de Lauzirika has been responsible for assembling some of the finest special editions known to man - most notably the gargantuan. obsessive five-disc 2007 Final Cut of Ridley Scott's . quite possibly the greatest, most comprehensive DVD and Siu-ray release of an time. So it's safe to assume what was previously known as the Quadrilogy will be the absolute last word on the space-terror franchise from hell. Ah ... the Quadrilogy. A hard act to follow for even this man - what could you possibly add to such a landmark release? Will Anthology merely prove to be no more than a nominal upgrade to excuse a studio cash-grab? As the uber-producer explained to Review when sat down to an exclusive preview of the new set in New York last year, Anthology is a labour of love. not just an epic contract... Remasters Of The Universe DeLauzirika says the real reason to care about a Btu-ray upgrade is its Hsuperior video and sound", and he's made sure to deliver both. Thankfully. we're talking less neurotic levels of endless tinkering, more subtle edge- sharpening. De Lauzirika even managed to sweet-talk James Cameron, at the time busy fiddling around with a little project called Avatar. into taking some time off to personally oversee the project. - 3 And the tech wizards at Lowry Digital It's yet another new version of the Alien responsible for the immaculate remasters special edition with much better sound of the Bond movies -were enlisted to and picture quality." carry out the subtle job of tweaking The transfer of tells the film to Cameron's new specifications a different story. While the digital encoding at without creating anything that looks is absolutely top-notch, there's a small but all like a digital fiddle. notic_eable amount of print damage. The Cameron promised that the new impact is minimal, but a small amount of from 1991. The former at last gets the version would be "De-noised, de-grained, flecks and specks are there, and they transfer it always deserved, with great up-rezzed, colour-corrected" - and suggest that less respect was given to care being taken to preserve how it that's exactly what we get, the director the fourth instalment than to any of the looked in its original 35mm production, personalty supervising a transfer of the others. Essentia11y, what we have here and it easily surpasses any of its troubled film that has seen the grain content is a very strong representation of a good DVD incarnations. Meanwhile Cameron's reduced significantly. There's no noise, quality archive print but de Lauzirika and preferred cut has undergone some only a fine, well-judged level of grain, clearly doesn't afford Resurrection the extensive adjustments.. a wonderfully precise colour palette same affection he does to the other films There's been extensive work on Alien3, throughout. Most strikingly, there's more in the series. Discussing a promo trailer too. most Specifically on its audio track. depth to the image than ever before. for the set. we can tell he didn't cut it As de Lauzirika explains. "People said the largely as a result of better managed personally, he quips, because ~1wouldn't sound was bad. and 1t was, but we had contrast The work maintains the have used so much Resurrection fo otage best we couldmusterat the time. intentional elements of the film's the if l had.. we dida whole new mix, distinctive look. As de Lauzirika says. This time bringing back. some of ihe actors to ~Aliens,of all four films, is the most Extra Time re-loop their cfialo9Je. Lance Henriksen different visually. You can't just shoehorn With extensive work on the quality of the came back, Charles Dance came back, so it into the look of the otherthree.H f ilms in the bag, the team turned their a lot of the stuff tha1 was really muddy Indeed, in the case of Aliens. the attention to the supplements - but with and you couldn"t make outthe first time reworking is quite extensive. It includes such an huge collection already out there - a lot of the lines where you hear it's just two versions of the film: the theatrical cut de Lauzirika initially doubted that he could fans, that's now been cleaned up. and James Cameron's extended edition blowing

DVD& BW-RAY REVIEW NOVEMBER 2010 029 beat his previous efforts on the DVDs "When Fox came to me about the Blu-ray set I ki nd of scratched my head -what more is there to do after 50 hours of content?" he said. "But believe it or not, we kind of blew the doors off the Quadri/ogyset. Alien Anthology Blu-ray is pretty much everything you've seen before plus a whole bunch of new stuff, and really amazing material that l frankly thought would never see the light of day on home video at all. period." The official count is tha t there are now more than 60 hours of special features - which, when considering the various cuts of all four movies, makes for a heaving package. According to de Lauzir ik a, however. this is something of a rarity - in today's climate, budgets for the production of extra features are suffering from shrinkage. "It's not entirely hopeless outthererightnow.but ithasbeenabit bleaker than usual," he says. "The bloom is certainly off the rose when it comes to bonus features" This may explain why the special features in Anthology are derived from the same sources, and almost always the same production sessions, as those on the Quodrilogy set. Although, when it came to hunting down new material, they left barely a stone left unturned. "If we don't have someone on the disc. it's not because we didn't ask," maintains the producer. "We asked everyone we could find. If they're not there. chances are it's because they said no." He notes that with newer films "People definitely have more to say because it's fresh in their minds. But

was enough to afford some degree of hindsight, but by now some foggy memory might well have gotten in the way, especially regarding the ear li er se t visibly frustrated and. in one shot, soundt rack. On the Quadrilogy release. pictures. These existing supplements verbalising it We get to see the director the ce nsored version was simply called were produced in a sweet spot with just get up from his canvas chair, grab a mic The Making Of but this time out. the right distance from production. All and declare, "It's amazing to me that Fox it's become the slightly toned-down four key documentaries from the DVDs is the number one studio in the country Wreckage And Rage. And where even have been included again, but while it isn't becausethey'reallsuchabunchofmorons." the chapter headings were censored readily obvious on screen or in the menus, lt's surprisingthatthisparticular outburst before, they're now back to their angry they're not quite the same. Most notably, made the cut even now. De Lauzirika originals: 'Development Hell', The Colour the notorious behind-the-scenes expose padded the edit with some add itional Of Blood', 'Requiem For A Scream' on Alien 3 has finally been released in an footage to bear t he brunt of Fox's So how is it that we have been able uncensored form. censorship but says he was amazed that to go from the bitter acrimony of making De Lauzirika admits that only a couple of they didn't cut anything. "What we've Alien3 through the censorship of the the Alien3 interview subjects were "brutally ended up with is even stronger stuff than Quadrilogyto finally letting it all hang honest", but there's more to this doc than what the studio rejected first time around." out on the Anthology? "Time heals talking heads. Among the previously unseen The doc was originally titled Wreckage wounds,H says de Lauzirika. Simple as that footage are several shots of Fincher on And Rape, after a music cue on the Alien3 Perhaps, but the hea li ng appears to have

030 DVD& BLU-RAY REVIEW NOVEMBER 2010 the archives to bring out every last down Fox's invitation to be involved in scrap of cool stuff for this release," either the production of Quodrilogyor Lauzirikaasserts. Anthology. The only time you see him A few of the pods are actually new in the supplements is in archive footage material filmed since the days of the from the Alien3 set. What's more, the Quadrilogy. Most notable among these extended version of his film presented is possibly an explanation from Jon here was not supervised by him, but was Finch (who played the title role in Roman instead constructed from what could Polanski's Macbeth) of how he was be construed to be his intentions. It's almost in Alien and why John Hurt took definitively not a director's cut. De over his role. intercut with footage from Lauzirika says that Fincher "had virtually his couple of days of shooting. nothing" to do with the project"aside For all the unseen material, however, from giving Fox his blessing to do it's perhaps surprising that little here whatever they wanted.H He quotes that has been newly minted. Particularly Fincher as saying, "The only way to get when there was a significant weight of a director's cut of Alien3 would be to expectation: Sigourney Weaver had said burn the negative and start over." that she would record a new corn men tary track for each film, but for whatever Pod People reason these have not materialised It gets even better, and way geekier, and de Lauzirika could have created new outside the main documentaries. De commentary tracks for the release had Lauzirika has included more than four he wanted to. hours of supplementary segments under Each of the tracks on the Quadrilogy the title of "enhancement pods·. These was an edit of several separate full·length are interviews and behind·the·scenes recordings. cut together as a highlights pieces that play like deleted, or in package, and there would've been an a few cases, extended scenes from option to break these cuts down. Instead. the documentaries. Where the main de Lauzirika has decided to preserve his thrust has been covered so well in the edits. "'Splitting up the commentaries chief docs. the pods wander into more might be easier said than done. For esoteric territory. "We've really raided instance. I actually really love the current edit of the Aliens commentary as it incorporates the absolute best of each recording session and flows together nicely. I'd hate to ruin that flow and have to use less interesting material to fill in the gaps generated by breaking up the single track." While there's no new commentary, there are new audio tracks. You can find, for the first time, an isolated 5.1 version of the score for each of the four films but with an extra twist. As de Lauzirika explains, "Inthe case of Alien and Aliens, you'll get two versions of isolated scores You'll get the composer's original versions, how jerry Goldsmith and James Horner wanted the score to appear in the film, and then how the director finally got his way and got his version of the score." What's On The Menu? The sixth and final disc is a virtual warehouse stuffed full of archive interviews and documentaries that predate the Quodrilogyor were made for television. It overflows with quirky oddities and Alien bric-a-brac including screen tests. deleted scenes and parodies from TV shows like Saturday eNight Liv and Family Guy; Even the menu pages themselves are extra features. Every screen you see is designed to look and feel like you're using a Weyland-Yutani console delivering blueprints, measurements and arcane trivia. It's fast moving stuff, so you'll have to be paying full attention - but these may

well be the first Blu-ray menus to have serious replay value. De Lauzirika reveals that the menus even step up to resolve some fan niggles. "The Alien3menu actually helps fill in a plot hole. A lot of fans have asked, 'Where did the egg come from in A/ien3, how did the even story the MU-TH-UR disc where all of the We would expect plenty of people to be start?' because it makes no sense when documentaries are housed, MUTHUR making the necessary arrangements come you see the film. Well, the menus attempt will basically tell you, 'Oh, these are the 25 0ctober. There's little chance these to tell that story." topics you were interested in,' and she supplements will ever be improved upon in Some innovative new Blu-ray tech will take you right to where the topics future - the memory of the participants is has also been employed to filter and sort are in the documentaries. This also waning and there's nothing more that can through the reams of content - chief of continues on to disc six where there's be done to salvage Alien3, with even the which is the MU-TH-UR mode. "This is even more archival material. It's allowing most esoteric nuggets of archive now in the biggest interactive goody in this set." you to refine your search parameters the menu waiting to be searched out and explains de Lauzirika. "MU-TH-UR was and create the experience you want enjoyed. There's nowhere else to go. At the computer in the fi rst film. And with If you just want to know about nothing least, not with the Alien franchise. Could MU-TH-UR mode activated, you'll be else except chestbursters, you can just Lauzirika get the chance to revisit some of able to tag topics as you watch the film, do that. You can select chestbursters. his other old works? "I suppose there's a a variety of topics coming up relating to and you can learn the hell out of part of me that would want to go back into the scenes you're watching, and you'll chestbursters across all four films and every project rve worked on. At some point. be able to create, basically, shopping lists. the supplemental discs."Recognising you have to let it go and move on. But gosh ... Everything you just tagged watching that this method of viewing may not be if only I could just do one more little... whichever film or films you watched, to everyone's tastes he quickly adds, those topics will now carry over in the "Or, you can just sit back and watch the The Alien Anthology is out on B/u-ray memory of your Blu-ray player so when whole thing if you have about a month on 25 Dctoberond will be reviewed in you get to disc five, which is basically of free time." a future issue.

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